Excerpt Hypnosis

Hypnosis can be helpful in controlling chronic pain, pain that never completely disappears. Chronic pain can be the result of a medical condition, or it can be caused by physical damage, perhaps from an accident. Pain can take an emotional and physical toll on you; it can cause stress that, in turn, amplifies the pain.

Anxiety and worry often accompany medical conditions that cause pain. You may fear a yet-unknown illness, or you may fear a recent diagnosis. The moment you become aware of the pain, you focus on it. As long as your focus remains on the pain, you are not focused on wellness.

Before designing a self-hypnotic pain control program for yourself, you need to have a complete understanding of the reason for the pain. Discuss the pain with your doctor and work with her to develop your wellness model. Your doctor may not be familiar with how hypnosis works, and you may need to furnish her with information about the benefits of self-hypnosis.

There are several technicques that use self-hypnosis for pain control; these include diminishing the pain, dissociation from the pain, and transference of the pain. You can also develop an image of the pain and build a positive model to push through it.

The dimmer switch technique gradually turns down the intensity of the pain. You can use a knob or a slider control, whichever works best for you. This induction will use a dimmer scale from ten to one, but you can change the count, making your own adjustments.

Find a comfortable place, loosen your clothes, take a deep breath, and exhale. Take a couple more deep breaths, exhaling in between, and then take a deep breath and hold it for a few moments before exhaling. Let your eyes go out of focus, and when you're ready, close them. You may be aware that you are beginning to relax your muscles. Some of your muscles may tighten from time to time, and when they do, you may relax them and go deeper and deeper into self-hypnosis.

When you count yourself down, allow plenty of time at each number. Continually suggest to yourself that you are going deeper and deeper, and that the pain is getting dimmer and dimmer with each movement of the control. Repeating the suggestions helps to reinforce them in the unconscious mind.

Now imagine your dimmer switch. Picture it, if you can, and feel your fingers ready to control it. Set the dial on ten. In a few moments you may start counting slowly backward, from ten to one. Before you begin to count, focus on the dial, and feel your fingers ready to turn it down one click each time you say a number. If you are ready, begin.

Ten: you feel your fingers on the knob, and you feel the pain as you breathe in and out, relaxing more and more with each breath.

Nine: repeat to yourself that you are relaxing and going deeper into hypnosis every time you turn down your pain control. Anticipate each number as you count down to one, and as you turn down the pain control switch on each count, the pain becomes dimmer and dimmer, just as lights get dimmer when you slowly turned them down.

When you reach one, suggest to yourself that the pain will be completely diminshed. If you are going to sleep, suggest that you will sleep, calm and relaxed. If you are doing something active, suggest that you will go about your activity calmly, relaxed, and with the pain dimished.